[Mike Nolan]

Was the corned beef and cabbage in the macaroni and cheese, or just a separate course?

I can't really say I'm all that fond of corned beef and cabbage myself, but that's largely because the only corned beef you can get is so fatty.

I like cabbage in soups, but my wife doesn't really like cooked cabbage. She'll eat sauerkraut, but doesn't really care for cole slaw, either. Sometimes I'll just eat a wedge of cabbage with some salt, but that's a way to get way too much sodium in your diet, not that sauerkraut is especially low sodium.

I'm going to be starting a batch of sauerkraut in the next few days, though.

[Mike Nolan]

Regarding today's less successful bread, I think it is important to show failures as well as successes. I know there are baking sites where only the successes get shown. We all HAVE fails, and I think we learn more from thinking or talking about what went wrong.

[Mike Nolan]

Not sure, but I find it hard to keep bagels more than about 3 days, too. Maybe it has something to do with how boiling them gelatinizes the surface? Or maybe it affect how much or where moisture is retained?

I did get some micro-perforated bags and bagels and baguettes both lasted longer in them, but they got kind of dry after a couple of days, kind of like keeping them in a paper bag.

Bagels freeze well, and it makes life easier if you slice them before freezing them. Leave them out for a few minutes and they're ready for the toaster.

[Mike Nolan]

Today's bagels came out looking good. I made two with havarti cheese.

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[Mike Nolan]

It has enough of a sourdough taste for me to be aware of it, but it isn't overwhelmingly sour. The internal structure is fairly open, so the new starter seems to be coming along well.

We'll see what my wife thinks of it later today. Sourdough and her don't always get along.

[Mike Nolan]

Well, the dough for the scoring practice loaf was a high hydration (75%) no-knead formula. High hydration doughs usually don't work well for me, and that was the case again today. The loaf flattened out when I dumped it on the counter after the final rise and though I tried to reshape it into a boule it still flattened out a lot in the Dutch oven. I probably needed to do more stretch-and-folds on the dough before the final rise.

The scorings didn't hold up well in the oven, either, though the blade did a decent job of cutting.

We'll see how the loaf tastes, it was the first I've made with my new rye starter, and it seemed active enough.

Bagel dough is rising, so I should end today's baking with a win.

This loaf is about 9 inches in diameter but only about 1 1/2 inches high.

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[Mike Nolan]

I told my wife we're going to have that classic Irish dish tomorrow, corned beef on bagels. 🙂

[Mike Nolan]

Send me the file in email, I'll see if I can figure out why it won't post. nolan at tssi dot com

Followup: I added it to your last post, didn't do anything except change the file name.

[Mike Nolan]

Yeah, that sounds about right for the weight loss in corned beef, the stuff you get in stores tends to be really fatty.

[Mike Nolan]

Northern Spy is supposed to be a good cooking apple, but it may be that it softens much faster than Winesap, which is IMHO one of the best cooking apples available in this country. (There are some European varieties that I'd love to try, though.)

Cosmic Crisp ranks up there with Jonagold and Winesap, IMHO.

However, Jonagold is not an apple that keeps well, maybe Northern Spy doesn't either?

[Mike Nolan]

The produce sections here are usually reasonably stocked, though there are occasional shortages and some of the prices are up significantly.

I see similar shortages and higher prices pretty much throughout the stores. Soda has gone from $5.98 for a 24-pack two years ago to $6.48 a year ago to $7.48 when on sale now, and $8.48 normally.

Bone-in chicken breasts were at 99 cents/pound this week, that's the first time I've seen them at that price since summer.

Triscuits or wheat thins and pimento spread are a weakness of mine, as are malted milk balls and M&M Peanuts.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm going to try a variant on the no-knead recipe from the slashing class, 40% semolina, 60% bread flour, using 20 grams of inoculant from my new rye starter to 100 grams of flour and 75 grams of water for the pre-ferment this morning, then another 300 grams of flour (same ratio), again at 75% hydration, plus 6 grams of salt tomorrow to build the final dough, I'll do the slashing and bake it in a Dutch oven on Wednesday.

[Mike Nolan]

I've actually managed to keep my weight about the same in the past year, though I really should lose quite a bit of weight.

[Mike Nolan]

Almond extract is one those ingredients that is far too easy to use too much of, and it can overwhelm other flavors.

[Mike Nolan]

This year, King Arthur didn't do their 'pi day' sale. Anyway, I found a local source for Bob's Red Mill white pastry flour, which appears to be very similar to the King Arthur pastry flour for performance, and King Arthur doesn't seem to be carrying the powdered caramel coloring any more, so that's two less reasons to order anything from them.

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